The rise of Christianity
During the 1st and 2nd centuries, Christianity spread with relative slowness. The doctrines of Jesus, who was crucified about ad 30, first took root among the Jews of Palestine, where a large number of sects were proliferating—orthodox sects, such as the Sadducees and the Pharisees, as well as dissident and sometimes persecuted sects such as the Essenes, whose ascetic practices have been illuminated by the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the mid-20th century. At the end of Tiberius’ reign, Christianity had spread to the gentiles as a result of the preaching of St. Paul in Anatolia and in Greece. At the same time, Christianity continued to make progress among the Jews of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Syria and quickly reached even Osroëne and the Parthian towns of the Euphrates, where Jewish colonies were numerous. The Roman authorities at first had difficulty in distinguishing the “Christos” believers from the orthodox Jews, but the religion of the former, on leaving its original milieu, quickly became differentiated.
A familiar charge against the Jews, however, continued to pursue the Christians: that they felt a hatred of mankind. Their expectation of the end of the world aroused a suspicion that that was what they indeed desired; moreover, they were also suspect for their aloofness—they cut themselves off from family and community—and for their meetings, whose purpose was obscure. Their 2nd-century spokesmen had to dispel the belief, often recorded, that they practiced magic involving cannibalism; further, that they indulged in sex orgies, incestuous to boot; and, the most common accusation of all, that they were atheists—people who denied the existence of the gods and rejected accepted cults. This last charge, which was, of course, exactly on the mark, must be set in the context of occasional episodes of mob violence against (non-Christian) atheists or doubters. Here the association of Christians with Jews, equally monotheistic, might have provided some protection for the Christians, but the Jews were faithful to a cult of the greatest antiquity and, moreover, had long made their peace with Caesar, Augustus, and their successors. It was a peace that could not extend to people who had (it would be alleged) apostasized from their own Judaism. Christians did not participate in the Jewish revolt of 66–73, and, under the Flavians, Christianity completely severed itself from its origins.
At this time the East was the centre of the new religion, whose followers grew in numbers from Egypt to the Black Sea and were beginning to be noticed in Bithynia and in Greece. Christians seemed fairly numerous in Rome as early as the end of the 1st century. When the age of the Apostles ended, the age of the church began, with its bishops, presbyters, and deacons, with its catechism, preaching, and celebration of the Eucharist. In the 2nd century, Christianity began to reach the intellectuals. Hellenistic culture offered educated Christians the resources of philosophical dialectic and of sophist rhetoric. The example of Philo of Alexandria had shown in the 1st century that it was possible to reconcile the Bible with the great Platonic ideas. By the 2nd century the Christian “apologists” tried to show that Christianity was in harmony with Greco-Roman humanism and that it was intellectually, and above all morally, superior to paganism.
But the Christians did not succeed in convincing the authorities. The first persecution, that of Nero, was related to a devastating fire in the capital in 64, for which the Christians were blamed or, perhaps, only made the scapegoats. In any case, their position as bad people (mali homines of the sort a governor should try to suppress) had been established, and later suppressions could be justified by reference to “the Neronian practice.” So far as criminal law was concerned, such a precedent had considerable authority, of the sort that Pliny, as governor, was looking for in his handling of the Christians of Bithynia-Pontus in 111. His master, the emperor Trajan, told him not to seek them out but to execute those who, being informed against, refused to abjure their religion. Hadrian and other successors hewed to the same line thereafter. Thus, the persecutions remained localized and sporadic and were the result of private denunciations or of spontaneous popular protests. Under Marcus Aurelius, the difficulties of the times often caused the Christians, who refused to sacrifice to the state gods and to participate in the imperial cult, to be accused of provoking the wrath of the gods: martyrs appeared in the East, in Rome, in Gaul, and in Africa. Commodus’ reign was more favourable to them, perhaps because certain members of his circle, not a very edifying one in other respects, were Christians or Christian sympathizers. This reprieve, however, was short-lived: Septimius Severus inaugurated the first systematic persecution. In 202 an edict forbade Christian (and Jewish) proselytism. Members of extremist sects were persecuted for preaching continence (which violated Augustus’ laws against celibacy), for holding the state in contempt, and especially for refusing military service. Under Caracalla, the situation quieted, and the church continued to progress, favoured perhaps by the relative freedom that the law granted to funerary collegia (whence the first catacombs).